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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379336">One Flash of Light (But No Smoking Pistol)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderglass/pseuds/spiderglass'>spiderglass</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Castiel and Dean Winchester in Love, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester Deserves Nice Things, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Destiel - Freeform, First Kiss, M/M, Road Trips, driver picks the music</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:47:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,980</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderglass/pseuds/spiderglass</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the longest road trip they’ve ever been on, just the two of them with no Sam. Dean feels a certain weight of responsibility to do it right.</p>
<p>Or,</p>
<p>Supernatural with an ’80s pop soundtrack, because Cas picks the music.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>92</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>One Flash of Light (But No Smoking Pistol)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>i. <em>everybody’s looking for something</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The lights of a town twinkle like stars on the horizon, and an exit sign promises food and gas, so Dean flicks on his right blinker and heads in the direction of flickering neon and ubiquitous golden arches.</p>
<p>When they stop for gas, the wind is whipping so strongly that the second he opens the door, all the trash in the car footwell gets violently sucked out, old papers and burger wrappers shooting past the gas pumps and out into the highway before Dean can even blink.</p>
<p>A silent beat passes before Dean gets out of the car. “Littering is wrong,” he tells Cas, with a cheesy after-school-special tone that’s mostly intentional.</p>
<p>It’s not like Cas couldn’t have figured that out. But this is the longest road trip they’ve ever been on, just the two of them with no Sam. Dean feels a certain weight of responsibility to do it right.</p>
<p>Inside the gas station’s mini mart under too-bright lights, Dean piles bags of junk food into Cas’ waiting arms as the angel follows him from aisle to aisle. He stops next to hot dogs rolling wetly on the little grill, and he points. “So, Sam always says to stay away from this stuff, or you’ll get dysentery or something.” He pauses for dramatic effect. Cas looks at him and just waits. “But Sam ain’t here, so I say screw his rules.” He grabs the tongs and fishes out a hot dog for himself before they head to the cash register.</p>
<p>Cas politely declines the offer of one. Or maybe not so politely.</p>
<p>“I didn’t sell you on them? Really?”</p>
<p>“Dysentery,” Castiel repeats pointedly, an edge of sarcasm creeping in. “Appetizing.”</p>
<p>Back on the road, the piedmont turns into mountain, and the highway leads them up and up. The road twists like a corkscrew, and jagged outcroppings on either side mark the places where, long ago, someone blasted through solid rock just to build this highway. The temperature drops, and Dean begins to regret making this drive at night, with nothing in sight but rock, guardrails, and clouds of snowflakes whipping against the windshield. He’s driven through much worse; maybe he’s just getting too old for this.</p>
<p>Either Cas senses his tension, or just notices the way he’s gripping the steering wheel too tight and grinding his teeth with irritation, because at some point the angel, currently riding shotgun, reaches over to switch on the radio.</p>
<p>Obviously, Cas already knows the rule about the driver picking the music. But Dean hadn’t put any on at all, which the hunter now recognizes as a mistake, so he doesn’t stop Cas’ hand from turning the dial.</p>
<p>Settling on something retro with prominent synthesizers, Cas turns it up, and the song throbs along like the pulse of the darkness around them, the moonless night they’re driving through, as Dean turns the wheel again and again. The road snakes right through the hearts of entire mountains, and the radio goes out a few times, crackling for a few seconds when they lose the signal, blocked by more solid rock, but it always comes back again. <em>Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree?</em></p>
<p>The strange, echoing song seems to bounce back and forth between canyons, between the rock walls that keep the Impala claustrophobically pinned in. When Dean looks at Cas during a straighter portion of road, the angel looks deep in thought, seriously concentrating, listening. It’s so different from the music Dean usually plays, and Cas takes an immediate interest.</p>
<p>It all just escalates from there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cas starts listening to ’80s pop music. And, apparently, he likes it. It’s all weird, alien-sounding stuff with synthesizers. Some of it Dean can dig, but sometimes it’s just too cheesy for him to stand.</p>
<p>Oh, of course Dean’s classic rock hits of the ’70s are still Cas’ favorites. There was no replacing them, especially Led Zepp. Cas had imprinted on Led Zeppelin like a baby chick imprints on its mother. Dean’s mixtape might have contributed to that somewhat. But the angel’s taste in music is expanding a little now, all the same.</p>
<p>Nothing about this trip really pans out the way he expected. Personally, Dean blames the music.</p>
<p>Sam was already out on a hunt, or maybe just making out with his girlfriend, when Dean got the call that prompted the road trip. It was from a friend of a friend of a guy that their dad saved once, or some such shit, calling in a favor. It was a few states away, but a pretty basic hunt, so there was no need to wait. He packed up his duffel and took Castiel with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After driving through the mountains for a couple of hours with very poor visibility, Dean’s feeling pretty beat, so he treats himself to reruns of <em>Saved by the Bell</em> in their motel room after checking in.</p>
<p>He used to feel guilty having shows like this on the TV back when it was him and Sam in motels, and they were still young and fresh-faced. Shows about kids and schools and lockers were just another reminder of the normal, well-adjusted life that Sam was supposed to have but didn’t. So Dean had never watched this show back in the day.</p>
<p>He’s watching it for the first time right now, as he approaches middle age. This is so fucking stupid.</p>
<p>The show is pretty stupid, too. Although its decidedly ’80s aesthetic reminds him of the radio station Cas was listening to in the car.</p>
<p>He’s still sitting there with the TV on, legs kicked up on the bedspread, boots still on his feet, when Cas comes over and sits at the end of the other bed. And when Cas starts watching the show with a rapt expression, Dean realizes that the<em> last</em> thing he should be complaining about is being too old to experience things for the first time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A few hours later, right when they’re about to head out and tackle the case, Dean’s phone rings. It’s the same guy, John Winchester’s fourth cousin twice-removed’s landlord or something like that, letting Dean know that the monsters have moved on from the area, stayed one step ahead to avoid getting caught by hunters. News reports and rumors indicated they’d headed across the border and into the next state, hours away from here.</p>
<p>Son of a<em> bitch.</em></p>
<p>On the TV, <em>Seinfeld </em>is now playing. He’s never actually tried to watch an episode of this show all the way through. The handful of times he’s left it on in a motel room, it’s always been the same damn episode, <em>every single time</em>.</p>
<p>Dean’s already driven ten hours today. He’s done. Since no one’s been murdered yet, no one hurt or kidnapped, he switches back to <em>Saved by the Bell</em> and goes to bed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next morning, Dean turns in their keys at the motel office, hikes his duffel bag a little higher on his shoulder, and heads out to the car.</p>
<p>Cas is waiting in the passenger seat, car running, radio on. Listening to that same radio station, Dean notes, as he opens the driver’s-side door and music spills out. The song sounds vaguely familiar…. <em>Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind.</em></p>
<p>Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>When Dean chucks his bag in the back and slips into the driver’s seat, he immediately changes the station. The cheesy song dies a quick death, more merciful than it deserved.</p>
<p>“I was listening to that,” says Cas.</p>
<p>Dean feels his eyelid twitch, still wearing an annoyed and grumpy expression, since that song was particularly god-awful.</p>
<p>But it’s also one of those days, those strange days when he’s—drawn. Drawn to Cas more than usual, getting an anxious feeling in chest for every one of their accidental touches. So after a pause and barely-suppressed eye roll, Dean wordlessly flips the station back, staring stoically straight ahead as he puts the car in drive, and they’re off.</p>
<p>Yeah, yeah, driver picks the music. But it won’t kill him to pick music for Cas every now and then.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ii. <em>strange as angels</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>They’re headed for the Tennessee border when Dean pulls in at a rest stop on the way.</p>
<p>“This is the one,” Cas tells him. Dean thinks he sounds almost excited, which makes no sense.</p>
<p>“What one?”</p>
<p>“This rest stop.” Cas patiently waits for Dean to get it. But Dean doesn’t get it. “The same one we stopped at last time. With Sam.”</p>
<p>And okay, yeah, they’d worked a case not too long ago that took them down this same stretch of I-81. Dean is kind of dumfounded that Cas would remember, let alone care.</p>
<p>“You complained that the design was stupid,” Cas offers, like it’ll help jog Dean’s memory.</p>
<p>“Okay…?”</p>
<p>“The half-wall.”</p>
<p>And Cas is evidently pleased, so excited that they are reliving this shared memory. The rest stop is nondescript, not even a convenience store or gas station attached. In fact, this entire strip of highway is nondescript, mind-numbingly boring to drive down, not much in the way of scenery, just a line of trees, even more likely to hypnotize you to sleep if—</p>
<p>“It was raining,” Cas supplies.</p>
<p>—it was raining. Which it had been. Rainy and foggy, driving through white walls with just the road visible in between.</p>
<p>Dean does remember.</p>
<p>He’d laughed about the rest stop’s dumb architectural design—not that he’d been legitimately complaining. The place was nice enough, relatively clean, a palace compared to the shitty gas station bathrooms they’re usually stuck with.</p>
<p>There had been some weird half-wall in each of the restrooms, the other half literally wide open to the elements, and rain was pouring in, flooding the rest area’s bathrooms. At least there was a small drain in the floor, but it was on the totally wrong side of the bathroom to do any good. There were little kids there at the time, too, ignored by beleaguered parents and splashing in puddles and running around Dean’s legs as he tried to walk to the car.</p>
<p>This is now some treasured memory to Cas, and what the fuck. It’s not a great memory, but it’s one they share. It all comes back to him now. As Dean thinks about it—a brief, liminal space in time that he never in a million years would have remembered otherwise—the feeling, the color of the memory changes.</p>
<p>It’s actually kind of a good one now, as far as memories go.</p>
<p>That time, they’d gotten back in the car with Dean complaining that you couldn’t even buy snacks there, and he needed jerky. Sam kept trying to talk about the lore, and the case, and the lore a few more times after that. Cas was in the backseat, meeting Dean’s gaze in the rearview mirror. They got back on the interstate and drove through the crappy weather, the endless mist, blurring the sharp edges of the evergreens lining the road. The radio was on, and Dean recalls that it was one of those ’80s new wave songs that Cas has come to love, “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure. Dean remembers thinking the song sounded like it should be playing on a beach. Not in the fog on the longest, straightest piece of boring interstate ever.<em> I'll run away with you, I’ll run away with you. </em>Even then, Cas had seemed to take a liking to the music.</p>
<p>Dean had felt kinda bad that Cas was listening to it there, instead of by a tropical vista. Evidently, he didn’t need to. Based on what Dean was just told, Cas had been having a ball.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dean figures they’ll reach their destination before midnight, and they can knock this case on the head. Based on what he’d initially been told on the phone by the friend of a cousin of a friend of John Winchester—or whoever the fuck—it sounded like they were dealing with a possession. They had packed accordingly.</p>
<p>They’re driving through the outskirts of a city at night, but they don’t intend to enter the actual metropolitan area at all on their route. They never really do, if they can help it. Always back roads.</p>
<p>Blurred lights glisten in the distance, a skyline he’s never seen up close, and Dean drives over railroad tracks in the dark, turns onto a road surrounded by thick brush.</p>
<p>The soundtrack of the moment is “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League. He idly wonders what Cas had made of that band name.</p>
<p>It sounds like a song that should be playing at night, Cas told him. In fact, most of these synthwave songs do.</p>
<p>The angel seems to have some kind of synesthesia going on when it comes to music. (Which, yes, Dean has heard of, he knows big words too, thanks.) Dean is shocked to realize that it makes perfect sense to him. When Cas makes offhand remarks like that, they feel right. Dean agrees—this song <em>does</em> sound like night. Other ones sound like day, or the ocean, or evening light across skyscrapers, or winter.</p>
<p>Kinda like the way “Peace of Mind” by Boston always reminds Dean of staring at this one particular stretch of overgrown sidewalk when he was five. He’d just never given it much thought before.</p>
<p>It’s dark, as black as that night on the twisty road in the snow, and Dean comes to the disquieting realization that he is in actual danger of getting lost, which rarely happens to him. The back roads just keep morphing into one another. The city lights aren’t visible anymore. He glances at Cas, who, though almost completely in shadow, seems unperturbed, perhaps not yet sensing Dean’s slight unease, his growing anxiety.</p>
<p>The chorus of the song keeps circling back around, the “don’t you want me”s over and over as Dean begins to feel like he’s driving in circles, too. He feels the tires bump over another set of train tracks, and it doesn’t feel right to him. This is not where they’re supposed to be.</p>
<p>Right on cue, the angel is starting to sense his doubt, turning towards him in his seat. “Dean—”</p>
<p>“<em>Shhh</em>,” Dean hisses immediately, literally shushing him without even turning. “I’m concentrating.” He probably shouldn’t be having this hair-trigger reaction to the situation, but if he’s gotten them lost, it’s fucking embarrassing.</p>
<p>He spots a gas station hidden in shadow by the side of the road, but it’s long abandoned. Its sign sits in big plastic pieces in its tiny, broken parking lot, graffiti scribbles all over the façade. Irrationally, Dean feels personally offended by its rundown state.</p>
<p>As he’s making a U-turn on a dirt road that was probably about to dead-end anyway, a train whistle moans somewhere in the distance, audible even over the radio. The car jerks as it hits a pothole. Dean hates this. He’s also replaying his harsh shushing in his mind, distantly wondering if it offended Cas at all, but he couldn’t really make out the angel’s facial expression at the time. It’s too damn dark.</p>
<p>The song throbs along, just like all synthwave seems to do, almost ominously, like a heartbeat. Like his own fucking heartbeat. He thinks that he feels Cas’s eyes on him, searching, evaluating, judging as Dean just spins in circles.</p>
<p>But soon enough they burst out of a gravel road onto a smoother one, the shrubs and trees clearing away, no longer blocking the sky as moonlight streams into the car, and he sees the city in the distance again, pinpricks of light on the horizon, above the treetops. He can breathe again.</p>
<p>And he looks over at Cas, stark light and shadow playing over his profile, his cheekbones sharp as knives, and there’s an ache somewhere between Dean’s stomach and chest, despite his relief at being back on a familiar road.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Finally, they’re there, some spot mid-Tennessee, close to some town called, ironically, <em>Lebanon, </em>and if that don’t beat all.</p>
<p>But Dean doesn’t have too much time to be amused by that, because just about two minutes after climbing out of the car near the deserted sawmill, and collecting their gear from the trunk, a siege is laid upon them.</p>
<p>Demons. Too many of them. Dean weaves expertly through them as they keep pouring out of the old sawmill building, through a chain link fence and up to the knoll where the Impala is parked by the woods. Constantly fighting and stabbing, no time for reciting exorcisms. Good thing Sam’s not here to bitch about that part. Too bad he’s not here to chant Latin for them.</p>
<p>There’s a song stuck in Dean’s head as he whirls around and slashes, and it’s goddamn Duran Duran. “Hungry Like the Wolf.” He’s suddenly glad they’re not fighting werewolves. The poetic justice would have been too embarrassing for him to bear, would’ve felt like the whole <em>universe</em> was mocking him. And it wouldn’t be the first time.</p>
<p>But the beat is in the back of his mind, still, probably beginning to influence the rhythm of his own punches and kicks, and Dean thinks this would make the worst music video ever. Actually, he would probably still look pretty badass. But the soundtrack would suck.</p>
<p>As the pair of them cut the demons down, one after the other, Cas looks extremely irritated that he doesn’t currently have the power to just smite them all and be done with it. And Dean admits, as the last demon pins him to the ground, he would get immense satisfaction from watching Cas smite it right in the fucking face. But he sees the tip of the angel blade abruptly jut out from the front of the demon’s throat, right before light flashes and Dean rolls out from under the black-eyed son of a bitch, and that sight was pretty good too.</p>
<p>The body drops to the ground. Cas holds out a hand, standing over Dean, and pulls him to his feet. Dean banged the back of his head against the ground when he went down, and he feels a little jittery, adrenaline still buzzing in his palms.</p>
<p>Cas cups the side of his neck and Dean, wild-eyed and confused, feels his stomach lurch, his skin going hot and cold. What—? And then the angel proceeds to heal his headache, and <em>oh. </em>Okay. That’s fine. Peachy.</p>
<p>The angel isn’t running on full batteries, but he has enough grace for this. Dean’s breathing evens out, Cas retracts his hand once the pain is gone, and they just look at each other.</p>
<p>Then they get back in the car and listen to the fucking Go-Gos.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>iii. <em>you keep your distance via the system of touch (and gentle persuasion)</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another case popped up on their radar, a suspicious local news story Cas read about on Dean’s laptop in the car earlier, with witnesses rambling about cold spots, so the road trip goes on. They keep driving.</p>
<p>Driving through the country. Passing dilapidated barns and collapsing houses with stained white porches, fields of corn and tobacco next to structures that are, uncomfortably, obviously identifiable as former plantations, smaller shacks leading up to a larger house. This looks like such a fucking depressing place to live. As do many of the towns—and the word “town” is pushing it—that they regularly pass through. Dean doesn’t even stop at the faded, worn-out gas station they pass, with signs like “live bait” and “hot boiled peanuts” in the windows, even though it’s probably the last one for miles, just not in the mood to look in the eyes of whatever kid is working there.</p>
<p>The sun is out. Golden fields flow by on either side of the car, interrupted by little groves of trees, small forests that appear and then disappear into more fields. Hay bales and grazing cows. Dean teaches Cas how to play “cow poker.” Cas wins their first round. And seems particularly amused by the rule that passing a church doubles your cow total, whereas passing a cemetery reduces your score to zero. The angel seems to find it quaint.</p>
<p>These songs seem completely incongruous here. Listening to them—these flowy, ethereal pop songs, most of them not even recorded by Americans—in the isolated, rural, sometimes backwards, sometimes fascinating American south.</p>
<p>This song builds into something lush, electric guitars joining a piano, and the main body of the melody punches on, full and flowing and dreamy. The sound is bizarre paired with the scenery currently outside the windows of the Impala. <em>I wanted to be with you alone, and talk about the weather. </em>Melodic vocals start low and keep crescendoing into high notes, reaching heavenwards.</p>
<p>Outside, the sky is blue. The sound of this song makes Dean think “blue.” All shades of blue.</p>
<p>The brown and yellow fields roll steadily on in the late afternoon sun. A lone chimney sticks up in the middle of a pasture, surrounded by the ruins of a house and a rick-rack fence.</p>
<p><em>Something happens and I'm head over heels, I never find out until I'm head over heels. </em>The Impala dips into a tiny valley and rocks over a tiny bridge, next to signs warning truckers not to even risk the crossing, before climbing another hill. The incline is so abrupt that it makes Dean’s stomach float in mid-air for a few seconds before the road levels out. A large silo comes into view on the right. A tall water tower next, the faded name of a small and forgettable town printed on its side. He looks at Cas looking at it.</p>
<p>Dreamlike voices sing about how <em>It's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand</em>, weird lines that make no sense and sound just about the opposite of true.</p>
<p>“You win,” Cas says, suddenly. Seemingly apropos of nothing. Dean peers over at him in confusion, but then he gets it—the old cemetery out the passenger side window, with its ramshackle headstones. Cas has just lost all his cows<em>.</em></p>
<p>He catches Cas’ eye before turning his gaze back to the road. Blue eyes. All shades of blue.</p>
<p>Dean comes to a reluctant realization: This song is good.</p>
<p>Cas has an elbow propped at the edge of the window, chin in hand, watching the scenery go by, and the light here is so yellow, it almost makes his face glow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They pass everything back and forth in front of the gas station, bottles of Coke and water, packets of whiskey- and teriyaki-flavored jerky, and those snacks you find more often in the south, like moon pies and pork rinds. He’d given Cas that mission, an initiation rite of road trips, rattling off his snack requests before sending Cas into the convenience store with a handful of bills. (“Look for the teriyaki ones,” he’d told Cas. When Cas took initiative, returning with not only that but also <em>whiskey</em> flavor, Dean beamed with pride.)</p>
<p>They divvy it all up, most of it Dean’s, anyway. They’ve reached civilization, but not by much, and this is the last gas station they’ll find before this rural road turns to city, when they’ll reach a more demanding stretch of highway, and getting off on an exit will be more damn trouble than it’s worth.</p>
<p>Outside the gas station, by the side of the road in the weeds, is a flimsy white sign, red letters made from pieces of tape. And Dean didn’t get a real good look at it as they pulled in, but from where he stands at the gas pumps he glimpses the words “pro-choice” and “marriage” and “going to hell?” Before the sour feeling in his stomach has the chance to grow, he catches Cas frowning at the sign, pulling it out of the ground and tossing it into the ditch as Dean pumps gas. Dean chuckles to himself, fondly.</p>
<p>Back in the car, he cranks the engine and Cas’ newest radio station of choice bursts into life. Based on the chorus, Dean would put down money that the song title is “Sunglasses at Night.”</p>
<p>With half a stick of jerky clenched between his teeth, Dean puts both hands on the wheel to exit the parking lot, and grouses, “You know who wears sunglasses at night?”</p>
<p>He’s about to answer his own question with more cutting sarcasm when Cas answers, deadpan: “Douchebags.”</p>
<p>Dean turns and stares at him.</p>
<p>Cas stares back, expressionless until he lifts an eyebrow, speaking like it’s painfully obvious. “Dean. You’ve said that before.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They just have to get past this last, aggravating part of the journey before they reach their next case, a salt-and-burn.</p>
<p>It’s those looping interstates where the roads crisscross over and under each other like a rollercoaster. Like spaghetti, as he and Sam used to say when they were little. Being on top of one of these things and looking down, out the window, used to feel so vertiginous back then when John was driving, when John was the only thing keeping them from plummeting down. But Dean doesn’t really give it a second thought now.</p>
<p>He just finds these highways aggravating. Everyone else around him usually drives like idiots. It’s another road lesson for Cas: drive defensively. (Spoiler alert: Dean doesn’t.)</p>
<p>Right now, they’re level with the city buildings and cartoonish billboards that rise up on either side of the interstate. It all looks grey, and so’s the sky. Overcast. He glances at Cas, then at himself in the rearview mirror. Their faces look washed out inside the car.</p>
<p>The traffic sucks, as it inevitably does on an interstate as popular as this. The Impala is crowded in on all sides by other cars as they all loop-de-loop over ribbons of road. The radio plays a song called “Cars”. <em>Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live.</em></p>
<p>“This seems appropriate,” he hears Cas remark, quietly and dryly.</p>
<p>Knowing he means the song, Dean can’t help but huff a small laugh, mainly at the tone Cas used. They’re both irritated by this traffic, it seems, and perhaps by the fact that the universe continues to mock them with its too on-the-nose soundtrack selections.</p>
<p>The song crashes on, that relentless beat slapping Dean upside the head and somehow reminiscent of bumper to bumper traffic, grey fumes, and stoplights flashing like the lights in a disco.</p>
<p>Sometimes Dean worries he’s passing it on to Cas, his occasional tendency toward road rage. When it comes to human behavior, the angel often appears to learn by example. But then, he can’t really imagine Castiel, Angel of the Lord, flipping off another driver, no matter how much he tries to picture it, so he figures they’re safe.</p>
<p>Then again, a few years ago he wouldn’t have been able to picture Cas saying “douchebags,” either.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he begins, cracking a smile, “you know what Sammy used to call these roads when we were kids?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Miles away from the looping interstate, they arrive at a neglected-looking cabin in search of what the locals identified as a “haint.”</p>
<p>Finding it isn’t hard. Glass bottles hang from the porch’s roof, traps for evil spirits. The ghost circles the cabin repeatedly, like it’s trapped in a cycle. They get a good look at it, check against local records, and identify it as a woman who died in 1898.</p>
<p>It should be a basic salt-and-burn. And eventually, they do take care of it and lay it to rest in an overgrown graveyard nestled in a forest. But it doesn’t end up being that easy.</p>
<p>The hard part is finding the graveyard itself. It’s ancient and well-hidden, and even after questioning more locals, they’ve hiked up and down several different steep hills covered in kudzu, until the sun sets and they stumble upon the clearing where the dead are buried. A sensation of fatigue pushes at Dean’s temples.</p>
<p>They should’ve been done with this hunt before suppertime. Now night is already falling, and they spent most of the day hiking and wandering around like amateurs.</p>
<p>Her surname was Eggers. The edges of the name carved into the stone are smooth, the letters made more shallow by the passage of time. They finish digging up the grave and toss their shovels aside.</p>
<p>Sweat trickles down his temple. He holds his lighter out to Cas while he takes care of the salt himself. It feels like Cas’ fingers slide over the backs of his as the angel takes the lighter. Dean jerks back from the light touch like a reflex.</p>
<p>He pours the salt in. Then the gasoline.</p>
<p>Cas is flicking Dean’s lighter, over and over, and can’t get it to light. Dean taps his boot restlessly against the dirt. There’s a gun strapped to his thigh, which hasn’t been useful for one second of this trip, and the holster’s beginning to feel like a vice. The flame sputters a few times in the night breeze, and Cas peers at it as it dies again. “This is inefficient.”</p>
<p>Dean snatches the lighter back impatiently. Cas’ hands feel hot. “Your face is inefficient.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t know why he said that. It’s the kind of dumb, juvenile comeback he would say to Sam. He doesn’t talk like that to Cas.</p>
<p>It’s like the more Dean wants to touch him, the angrier he gets.</p>
<p>He flicks the flame to life and tosses the lighter into the grave, watches it burn, staring down, feeling slightly ill. When he’s mad at Cas, he usually hits him with brutal honesty, something much worse and more painful than the childish bickering he shares with Sam.</p>
<p>When he sneaks a look at Cas, he sees they’ve both been watching the fire. And Cas is still watching it, his eyes dark, not even blue. The light flickers on his scruffy face. There’s a smear of graveyard dirt across the bridge of his nose, and Dean...carefully reaches over to wipe it off. His hand isn’t altogether steady. He holds his breath.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>iv. <em>one flash of light (but no smoking pistol)</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>They find another case.</p>
<p>On another elevated highway, tall, running alongside a coastal city, they’re on their way to gank some vamps.</p>
<p>This is just like those roller coaster interstates, only this one feels even higher, somehow, just because they can see the ocean out the passenger-side window. Or, well, the bay. Close enough.</p>
<p>It’s a couple of hours from any actual beach, but Dean could swear the air tastes of salt, even filtered through the car’s air vents. He doesn’t remember seeing much open water back when he and Sam were being toted all over the country by John.</p>
<p>He and Cas both turn their heads, in unison, to look over and down.</p>
<p>There are ships down there, Dean manages to glimpse just before—after a long series of signs alerting them that it’s coming—the car plunges into a tunnel. Dean flicks on his headlights and grumbles about the toll, and they drive a two-lane road through tiled walls lit by intermittent bulbs. It feels damp in here, but he’s pretty sure that’s just his imagination.</p>
<p>A song comes on, which, he will later learn, is called “Love Missile F1-11”. It starts out just like any other of those weird, robotic synth songs, but then it gets into this <em>groove</em>, with riffs and trippy effects laced over it, and barely any vocals except an occasional “shoot it up”. Dean feels sleep-short, but this song is injecting adrenaline right back into his veins.</p>
<p>“What is this?” he asks Cas abruptly, after an hour of no one speaking.</p>
<p>Cas squints at the radio. “I have no idea.”</p>
<p>Dean considers the song some more as they glide through the tunnel, finally shooting out the other side into the sun, the water running alongside them again, a few boats dotting the bay. And Sam might laugh at him for what he says next, but Sam’s not here.</p>
<p>“It fucking rocks,” Dean says, finally, after careful assessment.</p>
<p>“It does,” Cas concurs.</p>
<p>And on they go, towards the ocean.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They check into their grimy motel at dusk, a building just a matter of blocks away from a beach, and Cas has the radio on in the room. He’s gotten so fucking addicted to these ’80s stations as they drive from case to case, Dean notes, and now he’s searching the dial for another one.</p>
<p>It lands on “Ashes to Ashes” this time. This one, Dean likes. Bowie always gets a pass.</p>
<p>It’s so different from the swaggering ’70s-era Bowie he usually favors, those loud and ragged songs like “Suffragette City”. Instead, this is alien-sounding. One of the weirdest songs he’s ever heard. In some ways, he thinks, it sounds like Cas.</p>
<p>Dumping his bags on the floor, Dean listens. In a way he can’t put his finger on, the odd little blips and beeps throughout the song match the wallpaper in here, red-pink and red-orange circles in an almost asymmetrical pattern. And then there’s the way the drums almost seem to go out of sync. Otherworldly, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>
  <em>Strung out in heaven's high</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Hitting an all-time low</em>
</p>
<p>The song has a kind of mournful quality, he thinks.</p>
<p>The lights are all off in the room save one bedside lamp, and the sun has gone down outside, night almost falling.</p>
<p>
  <em>I've never done good things</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I've never done bad things</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I never did anything out of the blue</em>
</p>
<p>This is the time of evening when they both look like shadows, barely able to see one another’s faces, and<em> feel</em> like shadows, with the grazing, ghosting touches of their hands together. Like they’re afraid to let their hands really touch. They’re just standing there in the dark for no reason after an accidental brush of arms, and in the pause that follows, their hands inexplicably gravitate towards each other. But they don’t really touch. And for fuck’s sake, Dean thinks in a moment of clarity, they’re just hands.</p>
<p>His fingers curl around Cas,’ and Cas curls his own, and there’s nowhere to go from here but up. Dean is emboldened by the dark. That damn surreal song is still playing and he can’t really see the angel’s face when their lips glide across each other. Like two shadows touching. It’s so soft as he does it again, mouths gently parting and meeting again more solidly, and he keeps kissing Cas, and Cas keeps kissing him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hours later, working side-by-side taking out a vamp nest, they don’t speak.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>v. <em>many men can't see the open road</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>They’ve crossed the whole damn country for this one, and Dean slides back into the car with blood on his clothes.</p>
<p>The hunt got messy, and it took all night, but they’re done. And Dean’s driven twelve hours today. And they didn’t book a motel, because they haven’t seen one yet. It’s just all desert. Ghouls in the desert. Fucking ghouls.</p>
<p>It should have been an easy hunt, but it wasn’t, and oh, the indignity of that. He folds his arms over the top of the wheel, lets himself slump against it for a second. The landscape he sees out the windshield is burning, shimmering in the heat. It’s been days since they were near the ocean. God, he’s tired.</p>
<p>Cas, in his dirtied trench coat, cocks his head at Dean, then at the keys, which are currently lying between them on the seat.</p>
<p>Dean looks at Cas for a beat, head still resting on his arms. “Okay,” he says.</p>
<p>They switch places, and Cas drives.</p>
<p>Driver picks the music. Dean expects new wave, but Cas puts on Led Zeppelin.</p>
<p>It’s the tape. <em>The</em> tape. He spies the label peeking out from where Cas has stashed the case. Dean’s own handwriting.</p>
<p>He hears the slow, uncharacteristically delicate acoustic intro of “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Like an old folk song. Dean leans back heavily as he rides shotgun, not fighting his exhaustion for the first time in days.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh, you’ve got so much. So much. So much.</em>
</p>
<p>Dean could fall asleep to that. Except he doesn’t. Because he knows what’s coming.</p>
<p>The build, and then that sublime kick in the teeth, the electric guitars kicking in as Robert Plant wails. Yet the acoustic guitar still rattles on, steadfast.</p>
<p>He’s seen the rocks of the southwest before, but not these particular ones, not this particular road. The toe-curling gut punch of the song comes on as the red cliffs of Nevada come into view, as the car passes between them, and Dean, in the passenger seat, cranes his neck and looks up.</p>
<p>
  <em>Many have I loved, and many times been bitten</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Many times I've gazed along the open road</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Many times I've lied, and many times I've listened</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Many times I've wondered how much there is to know.</em>
</p>
<p>Out the window, they’re jagged and red and orange in the morning sun. Dean has the stereo turned up way too loud, as usual, letting the guitar riffs slice through the air like the rocks above the desert.</p>
<p>The sky is crisp and so fucking blue. So painfully blue that Dean is squinting out the window, that Cas has to squint his own blue eyes as he drives.</p>
<p>They haven’t said much to each other for the past few days or so. Dean pops the glove compartment and pulls out a pair of cheap sunglasses, smiles, and reaches over to stick them right on the angel’s nose.</p>
<p>Eventually the land flattens to desert all around them. Dean’s eyelids get heavy as he sees signs for Needles, for Las Vegas. Cacti and Joshua trees. Grass and dirt and sand. Rocky cliffs only visible in the distance. Some of them, in the far <em>far</em> distance, dusted and snow-capped.</p>
<p>Eventually, Dean falls asleep.</p>
<p>With Cas driving the Impala.</p>
<p>Cas will later tell him it was one of the truest, most honest displays of trust that Dean has ever shown him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Back home. It’s been days and days and days and days.</p>
<p>Dean luxuriates in the good water pressure of the bunker’s showers. Sometimes, that water pressure is the eighth wonder of the world.</p>
<p>It’ll be nice to catch up with Sam. What was supposed to be a small trip to hit a couple of hunts turned into such a big, sprawling thing.</p>
<p>They’d been so close to the beach, near the end. Maybe one day they’ll actually go to one.</p>
<p>They<em> could</em> have gone to one. He really thinks about that now, in a way he hadn’t when they were there. They could have literally walked out their motel room door and headed straight down to the oceanfront. The motel had a goddamn dolphin statue out front, paint chipped and flaking. The air was warm and soft, not chilly and bitter. He’d tasted the tang of salt and seaweed, even in the room (even in Cas’ mouth).</p>
<p>Dean doesn’t really know what it’s even like, a real beach, spending time lazing on the sand with nowhere else to be. But he aches for it anyway.</p>
<p>The lamps of the library glow orange. After his shower he finds Cas flipping through a book. They haven’t talked about anything important this whole time, not really. Just the hunts, just the work. Just the rules of the road. The shadows hiding half of Cas’ face remind Dean that his fingers have learned the shape of Cas’ nose, the curve of his jaw. Dean just aches.</p>
<p>Setting down the book, Cas eyes him and pulls something from the pocket of his hoodie—his coat currently in the washing machine—and presses it into Dean’s hand. Uncurling his fingers, Dean looks down and sees a souvenir keychain, a tacky plastic thing with an image of a guitar and the word “Nashville.” He grins. They’d never even been in Nashville, but he remembers the gas station that had been selling these, a whole rack of them to capitalize on its general nearness to the famed city.</p>
<p>Even though he hadn’t been the one driving most of the way home, and he’d had the chance to rest, the passenger seat still left his back feeling like crap. Somehow Cas knows, because of course he does, and he’s come around the edge of the table to place his hand on Dean’s lower back. Dean hears his own sharp intake of breath, which isn’t even from the pain. And then he’s healed, and Cas’ hand is still there, and even though the pain is gone he still fucking aches.</p>
<p>They lock eyes when Cas looks up at him. Cas lifts his free hand, and in his peripheral vision Dean can see it drift towards his face. He doesn’t stop it, doesn’t move, and for the first time in forever it’s silent, there’s no music, and he hears Cas murmur, “Let me….”</p>
<p>Then, from somewhere behind him, he hears Sam say, “Hey, man,” and Dean should get a medal for not putting his fist through the goddamn wall.</p>
<p>Though they quickly pull apart, Cas can obviously see this reaction written all over Dean’s face, and the angel chuckles at him, softly, the edge of his mouth just barely quirked up. And Dean feels a spark of hope that this wasn’t his only chance.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Over the next few days, Dean will catch Cas around the bunker studying the backs of various record sleeves and CD cases that Dean doesn’t recognize. When approached, Cas stows them quickly, hides them behind his back.</p>
<p>Dean spent an entire trip letting shotgun pick the music, breaking his own cardinal rule.</p>
<p>And Dean thinks he knows—dares to hope, but is pretty sure he’s right, and it makes him duck his head and grin.</p>
<p>Cas is going to make him a tape.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading this far!</p>
<p>All songs referenced in the story:</p>
<p>Sweet Dreams - The Eurythmics<br/>Mickey – Toni Basil<br/>Just Like Heaven - The Cure<br/>Don’t You Want Me – The Human League<br/>Peace of Mind - Boston<br/>Hungry Like the Wolf – Duran Duran<br/>Head Over Heels – Tears for Fears<br/>Sunglasses at Night – Corey Hart<br/>Cars – Gary Numan<br/>Love Missile F1-11 – Sigue Sigue Sputnik<br/>Suffragette City – David Bowie<br/>Ashes to Ashes – David Bowie<br/>Over the Hills and Far Away – Led Zeppelin</p></blockquote></div></div>
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